1879. | Recent Literature. 311 
As Mr. Culver, clerk to this committee, furnishes a short preface 
in which he speaks of the report as “ compendious” and a “ con- 
venient book of reference,” it is likely that he is responsible for it. 
None but the too partial eye of the editor could detect these 
qualities in a mosaic of which not a stone seems to have been 
fashioned to fit its place and all are put together without regard 
We have been informed that only 1200 copies of this report 
have been published, while 10,000 have been ordered by Con- 
ress. It is to be hoped that the other 8800 will not be issued 
until they have been completely revised and arranged so as to 
subserve some useful end, however small. t present the report 
may be compared to the last stanza in the “ House that Jack 
built.” Mr. Adams’ (J. Q.) first report on the metric system 
representing the malt said to have lain in that house. 
Covgs’s Birps oF THE CoLorapo VALLEY, Part I.!— Dr. 
Coues writings on ornithological matters have become so well 
known both to specialists and the public at large, that the prom- 
ised advent of a book from his pen is looked forward to with no 
ordinary degree of interest. 
The present volume, “ Birds of the Colorado Valley,” may be 
regarded as complementary to the “ Birds of the North-west,” and 
when the work is finished, for we are promised a second volume 
in continuation, we shall have from our author what may be con- 
sidered, collectively, as a very complete treatise, both technically 
and biographically, of the birds of our western interior. 
e volume is introduced with a prefatory note by Prof. Hay- - 
den, in charge, in which is briefly given the scope of the work 
and a general description of the area treated of, with allusions to 
its ornithological facies in its broader aspects, together with a 
graceful mention of the several. authors and workers in the same 
field whose writings and labors have been most largely drawn upon 
by the author. 
The volume is divided into convenient chapters, each treating 
of a single family and beginning” with a concise enumeration of 
the family characters. The genera or sub-genera are next charac- 
terized with sufficient amplitude for all practical purposes, when 
follows the treatment, in greater or less detail, of each species. 
it be permissible to compare the method of handling the 
Subject adopted here with that of the companion octavo, whic 
` | Birds of the Colorado Valley. A Repository of Scientific and Popular Informa- 
tion concerning North American Ornitholo Cours. Part 1.—Pas- 
seres to Laniide. Seventy illustrations. 8vo, pp. Xvi, 807. Washington Govern- 
ment Printing Office, 1878. Miscellaneous publications of the U. S. Geological 
Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden, U. S. Geologist-in-charge. 
VOL. XIII,—No, v, 22 
